I'm really surprised no one mentioned the ALIEN ties to DS. Dan O'Bannon (Pinback in DS, and co-writer of both DS and ALIEN) obviously turned some of the Beachball hunting scenes into the basis for ALIEN. As for this being Carpenters best, I don't know about that. I am kinda partial to ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and THE THING, myself...Then there's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE FOG, HALLOWEEN, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA...Ok, I'm a big John Carpenter fan...

Someone once asked me if I ever watched a film called Darkstar...."about 200 times" I replied.This is one of my fav. films. My fav.part has to be the bombphenomonology bit. I'm going to order the DVD as my video copy is now quite bad. I have better quality pornos!

I love the theme music too: "Benson, Arizona" - the music was composed by John Carpenter himself; the lyrics written by Bill Taylor. John Yager sings on the soundtrack, with backup from John Carpenter, Terry Winkless, Tom Wallace and Justice O’Neil.

superb.... remember seeing this on tv aged about 13 and rolling around my bedroom floor in laughter, then discovered a copy at a local yard sale and watched it again aged 30 with the same results. the scene of pinback stuck in the elevator has me in stiches every time. an excellent movie, and proves you don't need a multi-million dollar budget and gigabytes of cgi effects (are you reading this, george lucas??)

Cracking site folks. Full of really brilliant stuff about a truly funny movie. Would anyone know the name of the artist who recorded the theme song 'Benson Arizona', or where I could get a copy of the song?Thanks

I know I say this alot but the only way you'll get me to watch this movie would be if it was on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I believe Mike/Joel and the Bots would be the only ones to give this more entertainment for me. I bet they would be just chock full of oneliners for this movie.

Try this sometime: While riding in an elevator full of strangers some time say, "Lt. Pinback, it's time to feed the alien." and half of them will probably break out laughing. The elevator scene in Dark Star is the funniest sketch ever filmed in any scifi movie.

One of the bloody most important movies in my book! I saw it twice in a row, because the little part-arthouse-part-porn-cinema in the town where i lived (it`s true! The arthousepart was for tax reduction reasons integrated in the porn cinema. This sounds modern, but it was of course a dirty trick, hehehe. We kids didn`t care anyway, only the sounds from the other screeningroom were sort of strange to liten to,especially when there were quite parts in the movies we watched. Very funny: we heard the uuh ooh aah-stuff quite loud when we saw 2001-a space odyssy, when the astronauts float through deep space and you can hear only them breathing)Oh, and of course the bomb is happy to detonate! One should be a happy beeing when ones purpouse in live is clear, and one has the ability to live up to it (or better: die up to it;-)